Struck by a Lightning
by headinthecloudsgirl
Summary: Clint had a gut feeling that this day was going to suck and it proved to be right - fighting giant slimy worms wasn't enough so he had to go the extra mile and get struck by a lightning... just a normal day, right? Deaf!Clint, some h/c and a caring team :)


**A/N: Yay me, I'm not dead :) So, here I am, presenting you a little something I dreamt of and had to write down.. it isn't beta'd, so feel free to point out any glaring mistakes and I'll correct them!**

**I still don't own our archer or anything else comic and movie verse :(**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

Clint had had a feeling that it was going to be a bad day when he had woken up just after 5 a.m. this morning thanks to one of his rather unwelcomed nightmares.

Not that he liked any of them, but there were some that were worse than others and then some which were like worse than the worst.

One of _those_ had woken him up today.

His chest heaving despite his trying to calm the racing heart, Clint had gotten up and out of bed, not wanting to wake up Natasha any sooner than necessary.

By now it was well past eight o'clock and Clint was nursing his third cup of coffee in the huge common room slash kitchen that Tony had insisted on sharing with everybody.

Each Avenger had an own room with a bathroom en suite and technically also a kitchen, but - according to Tony - it was _tiny_ and it was a lot more practical to just have a common one.

So, instead of enjoying his drink in his own room, Clint sat cross-legged on one of the bar stools, staring out of the large windows and hating the fact that the sky was dark and heavy with clouds.

That was the moment he definitely knew it was going to be a bad day.

Everything that had really sucked in his life had happened when it had been raining – the car crash, the day he had witnessed Swordsman stealing, the day he had lost his hearing.

Put the experiences together with the nightmare and the day was doomed.

Taking another sip from his coffee, Clint caught the reflection of Natasha in one of the windows and turned to face her, signing a _good morning_.

_Morning_, she signed back, opening her hand and showing him the two rather small hearing aids in it.

_Why did you leave them?_

"I didn't want to wake you up while looking for them, Nat. You slept like a baby and that was kind of sweet. And I didn't want to have a knife to my throat if I touched you by accident," Clint replied, a smirk playing around his lips.

"That was close, Barton, I'm not sweet," Natasha said as soon as he had his aids back in place.

"Oh, we're back to last names, Romanoff?"

The punch to his arm was expected but that didn't mean it hurt any less – it still was a punch from the Black Widow.

"Yes we are, Barton. So, wanna tell me what's wrong?" Natasha's green eyes were boring into his stormy grey blue ones, not in an unpleasant way but yet leaving him no room to back out.

"Oh c'mon, Nat, cut a guy some slack," Clint started and the added after some seconds. "This won't work, will it?"

"No, it won't. What's wrong, Clint?"

"It was family reunion tonight. Not the best way to start a day, I can tell you as much," Clint sighed and leaned into the hand on his cheek. "And it's fucking _raining_."

Before Natasha could say anything in return, Steve jogged into the kitchen, a combination of rain and sweat glistening on his face.

"Good morning," he greeted them, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge.

"Morning, Cap," the two replied, Natasha's hand leaving Clint's face and ending their little conversation with one last exchange of glances.

"There's nothing better than a morning run, guys, really. Clears your head, makes you ready for the day," Steve said, eying the two assassins. He felt like he had disturbed something important.

"Not for this day, Cap.", Clint sighed and hated the gut feeling he had. Something was about to go very wrong, he knew it.

* * *

The gut feeling proved to be right.

It had been just past eleven a.m. when Fury had told them to deal with some kind of squishy-worm-things that had decided to destroy Manhattan and leave slime everywhere while doing so.

The Avengers minus Thor, who was still in Asgard, had flown with one of the Quinjets as near as they dared to the centre of the worm invasion and then spread out.

Tony was doing is best at keeping the worms where they were and not having them expanding their little playground, while Hulk just grasped them and pressed until they exploded.

Natasha and Steve were also somewhere on the ground, helping civilians as well as battling the creatures with shield and guns – it turned out that they didn't like the Widow's Bite either.

Clint was perched up on a roof as usual, keeping track of the worms, warning the others and helping to coordinate their movements, shooting arrows from time to time if he had found a weak spot.

"You've got some coming on your eleven, Cap," Clint said as he released yet another explosive arrow, one of the few that were left.

"Got it, Hawkeye," Steve replied, throwing his shield and effectively cutting the head the nearing worm off.

Although there were no more worms coming from wherever they had come from in the first place, it was still one hell of a mess and fight.

As if it wasn't already bad enough, the rain that hadn't stopped since this morning had slowly turned into a thunderstorm, lightnings crossing the sky closer and closer to where they were fighting, the flickering light making the worms look even creepier.

"Are you kidding me?" Clint grunted, nocked an arrow, then drew and released it without even looking where he was shooting – he knew it was going to hit its target.

"What is it, Feathers?" Tony's voice came through his comm. which was thankfully integrated in his hearing aids, thanks to Tony.

Clint had been reluctant about telling the rest of the team about him being almost completely deaf, but with a little push from both Nat and Phil, he had accepted that it was better if they knew about his weakness in case it ever was to put him on the downside of events.

Phil, as his handler, was fluent in ASL just like Natasha was as his partner and best friend. After some time, Clint had started teaching the rest of the team the basics so that they could at least communicate the most important stuff like _'Are you okay or is it as bad as it looks?'_ when he couldn't hear them. Lip reading was one thing he could do and talking without hearing himself another, but it was a lot more comfortable and a lot less exhausting if he just signed.

"Nah, nothing."

"Scared of a little lightning, little bird?"

"Stark, shut it. Not in the mood for –" Clint's world was suddenly nothing but white-hot pain, his body going rigid for a moment before collapsing, taking the archer into darkness.

* * *

"Hawkeye?" Steve asked for what felt like the hundredth time, but he still didn't get an answer, "Clint, do you copy?"

Nothing but radio silence was the reply he got, concerning him even more than he already was.

"Iron Man, I want you get up to Hawkeye, see what's wrong," Steve instructed and threw his shield once again, barely registering how it killed yet another one of the worms.

"Got it," Tony put his thrusters on full power and flew the two blocks he was away from Clint's last known position as fast as possible.

The two of them shared the same kind of humor and had grown quite fond of each other, despite the constant bickering.

As soon as Tony came near the rooftop, he saw the still figure, completely clad in black clothing, and it made his heart beat twice as fast.

"Shit," he cursed letting himself fall next the archer, face plate lifting up. "Clint? Can you hear me?"

_Dumb question, genius_, Tony thought to himself, noticing the blood coming from Clint's ears – the hearing aids must have literally blown up, probably through some kind of – "Oh, _shit_!"

"Sit rep, Stark, now!" Steve's voice had an edge to it; he had noticed that Tony's cursing was more stressed than normally.

"Remember that lightning where we thought it was really close? I think it was even closer than we thought," Tony said, slightly shaking Clint, trying to wake him up.

"Are you trying to say –"

"That our bird got struck by a lightning? Yes, that's what I'm trying to say."

Tony shook the man again, this time getting a reaction in form of groaning.

"He's waking up, somebody get me Widow up here."

* * *

The first thing Clint noticed was the pain. Like, just everywhere in his body.

Then he noticed he was wet, rain was pouring down and that someone was shaking him.

Groaning, he opened his eyes, seeing Tony's face in front of him, seeing the lips moving, but not hearing anything.

"I can't hear you," he slurred, trying to form the words as accurate as he could in his condition.

_Hearing aids are broken, Natasha's coming. You okay?_ Tony signed a little sloppily, the movements were still kind of foreign to him.

Clint only nodded in answer to that but regretted it immediately. It seemed like he had hit his head pretty badly when he had fallen, the nodding making his vision swim and head pounding even worse.

Tony was eying him suspiciously, only raising an eyebrow when he saw Clint getting even paler as soon as he nodded.

_Sure? _

Before Clint could reply, however, Nat was suddenly kneeling next to him and Tony, her face showing for once not the usual mask, but worry.

_List them_, she signed. They'd do this after every mission, sitting on the bathtub, trying to patch the other one up, asking to list the injuries.

_Head, ears, knees worst,_ Clint signed back and then slowly started to push himself from the ground and into a sitting position. _What happened?_

Natasha looked at Tony who had Jarvis running all of the information he got to come to the best fitting scenario for what had happened.

"Seems like a lightning struck the building but some of the electricity got conducted by the water on the ground. Clint must have been kneeling so that the electricity could enter his body, what would also explain why his knees hurt – electrical burns," Tony explained and then called for a medevac.

"I don't know how much voltage ran through his body and if he passed out from it or from the fall. We need to keep an eye on his heart rate," he rambled on, JARVIS already doing a full body scan of the fallen archer.

_What did he say?_ Clint asked, trying not to focus too much on the fact that his head hurt like it was going to explode, his throbbing knees or the fact that he could feel blood running from his ears.

_Basically that you got struck by a lightning_, Natasha signed back and then noticed his slightly dilated pupils. _Concussion?_

_Think so. What's up with my ears?_ Clint closed his eyes for a second, before opening them again to see Nat's reply. It hurt to concentrate on the moving hands.

_Hearing aids blew up, looks like the splinters got buried in your ear. That's why there's blood, don't worry. _

_Good thing I'm already deaf, right?_ Clint joked and then dared to look at his knees.

The fabric that once had been covering them was burnt, at some places even no longer existent, and he could see angry red skin, although not as bad as he had expected.

Rain was still pouring down on them, wetting them to the bones and Clint distinctly wondered what he was even doing here. Last thing he remembered was waking up from a nightmare and padding into the kitchen to get coffee – but how did he get up on a roof?

_How did I get here, Nat?_ Clint signed, having trouble to stay in a sitting position while moving his arms.

Natasha guided him back to lying down, a frown forming on her face. _You don't remember?_

After Clint's very careful shake of his head, she turned around to Tony, facing him completely so that Clint wouldn't be able to read her lips.

"He says he can't remember getting here. Tony, how bad is this? I know you've got JARVIS running all possibilities and I want to know the odds, got it?"

Tony glanced at their archer who had his eyes locked on something in the sky before answering her, "We can be glad that it wasn't a direct strike but the power was mediated by the water he was kneeling in. JARVIS, tell her."

"Yes, sir. Based on the data I have, a moderate lightning injury is the most probable cause of Agent Barton's condition. Moderate lightning injuries may cause seizures, respiratory arrest, or cardiac standstill, which spontaneously resolves with resumption of normal cardiac activity. Much of the symptomatology mirrors that of mild lightning injury - such as loss of consciousness, amnesia, confusion, tingling and numerous other nonspecific symptoms - except superficial burns are much more common, both initially and in a delayed fashion. I took the liberty of quoting from a medical journal," JARVIS said an then added, "I am monitoring Agent Barton's heart rate, blood pressure as well as brain functions for any indication of a seizure."

Natasha sighed and closed her eyes for a second. She had known that it didn't look too well, hell, the lack of Tony's sarcastic remarks had been enough to set her on edge.

"Prognosis?"

"Full recovery except for the possibility of paresthesia and sleeping disorders."

"Well, he does have those already, so, no worries," Tony smirked and then also looked into the still cloudy sky. "Screw medevac."

He waved his hands in front of Clint's face to get his attention and then signed their little slogan, _Clench up, Legolas._

Clint actually managed to smile and slurred, "This is the only time you get to carry me bridal style, get that?"

"Whatever you say, Feathers, whatever you say."

* * *

Tony wanted to fly them to the Tower, as it was nearer and at least just as well equipped as any hospital in New York.

"Steve, go tell Hulk that his arrow man is hurt and needs Bruce, will you? Don't wanna have Barton freaking out because he doesn't know the doctors," Tony said and then heard Cap shouting the message to the rage monster.

"He's on his way."

"Yeah, I noticed. It's kind of hard to miss a giant green half naked man jumping from one building to the next, Cap."

Tony smirked in spite of himself when he watched the Hulk tear half of the town apart to get to the Tower as fast as possible.

He just hoped that they didn't have to pay for the reparations. On the other hand, why would he even care, he was a billionaire – hell, he could just buy the whole city if he wanted to.

"Sir, if I may disturb your thoughts, Agent Barton seems to be in distress. There is, however, no obvious medical reason for the decline of his condition," JARVIS' thick British accent stated and caused Tony to look down in alarm to the archer he had cradled in his arms.

"JARVIS, can you modify my voice in a way that Clint can hear me?"

"I'm working on it momentarily." Some seconds passed before the AI gave his OK.

"Clint, that paint for the suit was kind of expensive, so when you throw up on it, you're gonna clean it yourself, got that?" Tony teased and tried to put even more force into his thrusters.

It was only some more blocks to the Tower but he didn't want Clint to run the extra mile without having medical personal at their side.

"Not gonna happen, Stark," Clint managed to say, not even wondering why he suddenly could hear Tony, but nothing else.

"The throwing-up-part or the washing-it-off-part?"

"Both."

"Well, then I'm relieved. Just leaves the question why you look like you just stole Romanoff's favorite knife, you know, all white and chalky."

Clint just snorted and was able to make out the huge A on the Tower, just before he got really dizzy, like, ten times worse than he had been before.

"Concussion, nausea, probably gonna pass out in a second or two."

Tony nodded to himself, hearing the nonchalant tone of Clint's voice, "Yeah, that would make – " Then he registered the actual words, "Wait, what?! No, no, no, Clint, don't you do that! We're almost there, okay?"

Tony risked a glance down to take a look at the archer and noticed that, in fact, Clint's eyes were slipping close.

"Hey, birdbrain, wanna finally tell me what's going on between the redhead and you? Doing the horizontal tango?"

The normally risky subject to breach, didn't achieve what Tony had intended, though. Not even processing what the billionaire had said, Clint succumbed once more to darkness.

* * *

When Clint came to again –_again_ – he noticed that he still couldn't hear a thing and that a hand was on his arm.

He slowly blinked his eyes open and looked directly in Bruce's face hovering over him. If it hadn't been for the familiar scientist's hand, Clint would already have been up and have the neck of the guy who dared to touch him snapped.

Bruce's calm eyes locked with Clint's as he slowly pulled pack his hand to start signing to him, _You're at the tower, you're safe. The others are on their way as soon as they have killed the last of those worms._

Clint nodded carefully and then took in his surroundings; he was in medical, along with Bruce who had somehow managed to get some pants and a shirt to dress into.

_I already bandaged your knees, but your hearing aids are busted and I need to clean out the splinters, alright? I know it's gonna be uncomfortable, but I can't knock you out because of the concussion you have. Just tap me, if you need a break, _Bruce explained to him and waited for Clint's fist to move up and down before he grabbed the tweezers from the little table next to him.

Pulling the little plastic splinters out of Clint's ear turned out to be quite challenging. Trying to locate them was hard enough and then getting a good grip on them even more so. Every few minutes Bruce would ask if everything was okay, if Clint needed a break, if he felt more sleepy than usual.

"Just get it done," Clint said through more or less clenched teeth and tried to ignore that he still could feel warm liquid running from his ears.

Bruce was his friend, he was allowed to show some indication of discomfort, but it was still strange for Clint that he could he open about was he was feeling.

It was always "_lock your emotions in the very last corner of your mind, or you die_" when it came to SHIELD agents, emotion was something to be used against you, not something to be showed openly.

When Clint had had several broken ribs along with some other torture induced injuries and still had been whispering _I'm fine, I can take it_ when the team had finally found him, they had known that they had to do something to make him as well as Natasha comfortable enough around them to admit when they felt a little under the weather.

A new hand running through his short hair interrupted the archer's thoughts and he instantly leaned into the touch, knowing it was Nat.

_Don't do that again, Clint, or you'll get to know what real pain means_, she signed and actually looked shaken.

"I'll try not to get struck by a lightning again, Nat," Clint said, noticing that his chest felt a bit funny.

_Get struck by a lightning as often as you want, just don't do the extra mile and go into cardiac arrest!_ Nat signed back before her hand returned to stroking his hair, her face once more back to almost unreadable.

"I didn't even close my eyes," Clint asked more than stated and then thought about it for a second. Well, maybe he had closed his eyes for just a second.

_Yes you did and you gave us quite a scare. Right now, everything is alright, but we'll keep an extra close eye on you EKG along with the concussion checks every two hours_, Bruce explained and actually looked sorry for the permanently disturbed night Clint would have.

"It's okay, not the first concussion I had."

"We should probably try and change that habit…," Bruce sighed.

* * *

The team really tried to take shifts, but ended up all together in Clint's room most of the time. Clint had to be hooked up to the EKG for at least twenty-four hours, after his little trip to the other side preferably a bit longer.

After the first twelve hours had passed, Tony came up from his garage, a pair of outer hearing aids in his hand. It was not something Clint preferred, but he could wear them while his ears were healing.

"Thanks, Tony, really," Clint said as soon as he had the aids in place, enjoying all of the little sounds he could hear again. Except that beeping noise keeping track of his heart rate - that was just annoying.

"I'm working on a new pair, EMP and water proof, including your comm., extra small and not noticeable if you don't know you have some. Also not traceable when searched for electronic devices, so you'll have contact when someone decides to abduct you or something," Tony rambled, not willing to accept Clint's thanks when he had been the one to build the aids that had been fried.

"That would be awesome, really. SHIELD tried, but failed – as always," Clint smirked and then tried to sit up a bit without getting tangled in the wires attached to his chest.

Steve, who was sitting on a chair next to the bed, sketching something, took in a sharp breath when he saw the state of Clint's back.

"What the heck happened to your back?" he asked, hand hovering over the blue bruises but not daring to touch them.

"Well, I did land on my quiver and it's not exactly fluffy," Clint replied, knowing what his backside must looked like.

Just like the concussion, by far not the first time.

Tony raised an eyebrow. "The real question should be, how do we explain to Thor that Birdboy got struck by a lightning, when he and Mjölnir weren't even around?"

* * *

**A/N: So, did you like it? I'll welcome every review with a cookie :))**

**Btw, the medical part JARVIS quoted really was from a medical journal, hope they got it right :D**

**See you next time, guys!**


End file.
